TenseBuilder vs Little Stories Lite
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
TenseBuilder
This app uses animated videos to teach students how to identify and use correct past, present, and future verb tenses. It includes interactive exercises and a recording feature to help improve language skills.
- Animated video lessons
- Demonstrates past, present, future tense
- Focus on irregular past tense verbs
- Interactive sentence completion
- Voice recording for practice
- Drag and drop sentence building
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Own as an individual app or as part of our MES Speech Therapy Bundle. Winner - 2012 2nd Best Educational App by Let's Talk SLP Winner - 2012 Best Teaching App by TeachHub.com Winner - 2012 Best Education App by TeachersWithApps.com TenseBuilder is designed to help students learn how to identify and use correct tense forms by playing movie quality animated videos to demonstrate past, present and future tense. 48 video lessons (will expand to 58) are in place to help give students a deeper understanding about the purpose of tense. Special attention is paid to the past tense of irregular verbs. Students will learn how to sequence events and how to differentiate between events that will happen, events that are happening now and events that have already happened. Students will also identify correct written verb forms and drag them to complete sentences. Students have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their receptive and expressive language skills and promote carryover of these target verb forms to their conversational speech. Tense Builder offers a unique environment for improving a student's ability to understand tenses and use verb forms properly. FEATURES -48 target verbs with matching animated movies -Movies employ humor to engage student -Video modeling for each verb and tense form used -Each verb has separate animated lesson to show past, present and future tense -Option to focus on a particular tense -Ability to address past tense developmentally, by first teaching regular past -ed forms and then moving to irregular past. -Includes receptive task, where student taps the correct image to match a sentence, and an expressive task where student drags the correct verb form to complete the sentence -Intuitive drag and drop to create sentences -Words are spoken as they are being dragged for emerging readers -Record feature allows students to record sentences in their own voice -Save and email recorded sentences LANGUAGES - English REQUIREMENTS - Compatible with iPad - Requires iPad 5.0 software update TenseBuilder is part of "The Builder Series" of award winning education apps. Mobile Education Store has won over 40 app awards and has been named educational developer of the year in 2011 and 2012. Mobile Education Tools is a member of Moms with Apps, a collaborative group of family-friendly developers seeking to promote quality apps for kids and families. Recommended Ages: 3-6, 6-10 Categories: Special Needs, Education
Little Stories Lite
This app uses short, engaging stories with illustrations and audio to help children develop language and literacy skills. It offers tools for speech practice, comprehension, and tracking progress, making learning fun and effective.
- 100-word engaging stories
- Full-color illustrations
- Personable audio recordings
- Story-talk activities
- Reading fluency tools
- Assessment and flashcard creation
- Targeted sound practice (R, L, S, Th)
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A child’s language and literacy development is a big deal—for all of us! So why do we start with something as small as a 100-word story? As Aesop said: “Good things come in Little Story packages.” Okay, so maybe he said something more like small packages, but we do believe Aesop would love what our Little Stories can do. After all, he believed in the power of a very short story. And so do we. Why 100 words? For one thing, it keeps a story simple and manageable. A child quickly reaches “the end” and feels a sense of accomplishment right away. But it’s more than that. When we kept a story small, we realized that structures stood out and speech practice focused. Little felt so very big! So, we created 82 engaging stories and combined them with incredible illustrations—that’s what your young user will notice. But, you will notice that we are so much more than a good read. Each story is a package—a package bursting with supporting curriculum. We promise to teach you how to teach with story as you push those buttons and swipe away! Yes. You will see how a carefully crafted story is loaded with potentials for learning. But when you are sitting side by side with your young user, you will feel how a small story can be both wonder-filled and fun. Here is the package that will impress any student: • A variety of entertaining characters in all kinds of story situations. • Beautiful, full-color illustrations. • Personable audio recordings that allow a child to explore the stories independently. • Wonderful story-talk activities that help turn the reading experience into a mini book club. • Fun activities such as tongue twisters and coloring pages. Here is the package that is filled to the brim for you: • Sound-saturated stories to tune a child’s ears to phonemes. • Reading fluency tools that track, graph, and show reading progress. • A practical assessment feature that allows you to mark a child’s reading, vocabulary, and speech errors and convert them into flash cards for practice. • The capability to highlight specific word groups (sight words, phonemic target words, and challenge words) in the story text or to pull them into flash cards. • WH Questions and Let’s Talk activities that cultivate comprehension and conversation. • Sequencing practice that subtly guides a child in narrative structuring. • A retelling activity that is reinforced by a straightforward narrative model—a tool that can help a child understand story structure better than many adults. • Story data including verb tense and point of view to help guide language practice. • Story sorting to help you locate stories by title, theme, reading level, and sound. • An emphasis on the R, L, S, and Th sounds (the most difficult sounds to master in speech). • Scoring and reporting features to monitor and share user progress. • And more… Children have taught us that potential matters so much more than size. In fact, small has its very own kind of power. That has been our mindset throughout the development of our Little Stories—the power of children and the power of small stories. That mindset has made all the difference. For professional teachers and speech-language pathologists: Our curriculum specifically supports reading fluency and comprehension as well as receptive and expressive language objectives. READING AND LITERACY • Reading fluency • Reading comprehension • Story structure awareness • Story tradition and genre exploration RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE SKILLS • Attention and listening • Vocabulary acquisition • Story structure and comprehension • Question processing EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE SKILLS • Speech production • Phonemic awareness • Story sequencing • Story retelling • Question answering We are confident you will enjoy sharing our Little Stories. More important, you will love watching your young learner make big leaps in language and literacy development!
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Little Stories Lite at Free against TenseBuilder's $9.99. Little Stories Lite also leads on ratings volume (11 vs 2). TenseBuilder's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 30) and review sentiment (85% vs 75%). On rating, update cadence, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Little Stories Lite is free to download; TenseBuilder costs $9.99 up front. Little Stories Lite sells 30 one-off in-app purchases. TenseBuilder asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.0 for TenseBuilder against 4.0 for Little Stories Lite. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Little Stories Lite has 11 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 85% of TenseBuilder's written reviews are positive against 75% of Little Stories Lite's.
TenseBuilder ships an update every 6 months, Little Stories Lite every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on June 5, 2026 and June 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | TenseBuilder | Little Stories Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.0 (2 ratings) | 4.0 (11 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 85.0% of reviews — better | 75.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 11 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Every 4 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPad | iPad |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 466 MB | 189 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Mobile Education Store LLC | Little Bee Speech |
Customer experience
TenseBuilder
Little Stories Lite
In-app purchases
TenseBuilder
No in-app purchases
Little Stories Lite
- Sam's Soda Surprise$0.99
- The Three Little Possums$0.99
- Thad's 3D Day$0.99
Show 27 moreShow fewer
- Jace's Race$0.99
- Too Many Pastries$0.99
- Space Spaghetti$0.99
- Sleepless Sloths$0.99
- Snowball Fight$0.99
- Lemonade Lizard$0.99
- Isabel Goes to Whale School$0.99
- Ruby's Daring Rides$0.99
- Geary McCleary's Beard$0.99
- Cheer and the New Sleigh Gear$0.99
- Pirate Treasure$0.99
- Pretzel Pretzely$0.99
- Ethel's Toothpastes$0.99
- Clark's Clubhouse Clues$0.99
- Nora and the Unicorn$0.99
- Alligator Tourney Trouble$0.99
- Glide and Glee$0.99
- Castles and Paddles$0.99
- Emily and Leah$0.99
- Robot Rescue$0.99
- Phonemic Target S$6.99
- Phonemic Target L$6.99
- Phonemic Target TH$6.99
- Phonemic Target R$13.99
- Upgrade to Pro$29.99
- Upgrade to Pro$35.99
- Upgrade to Pro$59.99
Questions
Is TenseBuilder free?
Is Little Stories Lite free?
Which has better reviews, TenseBuilder or Little Stories Lite?
Do TenseBuilder or Little Stories Lite have ads?
Which is updated more often, TenseBuilder or Little Stories Lite?
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